In his youth, Norman Rockwell likely saw portrayals of beautiful women on the covers and pages of the magazines that he would eventually work for. At the turn of the twentieth-century, Charles Dana Gibson created the elegant and impetuous “Gibson Girl,” a youthful, stylish woman with an hourglass figure and long necktopped with voluminous, upswept hair— an object of desire in her time.

Busy with early commissions for the Boy Scouts of America and children’s magazines, Rockwell mastered the art of painting freckled-faced boys with readable expressions, but his real ambition was to paint a cover for The Saturday Evening Post. Trying to emulate the Post’s covers, Rockwell created his version of a gorgeous Gibson-style girl being kissed by an elegantly clad man. When Rockwell asked his cartoonist friend for his opinion of the work, Clyde Forsythe declared it to be “Terrible. Awful. Hopeless. You can’t do a beautiful seductive woman. She looks like a tomboy.…” Forsythe advised Rockwell to stick to what he did best, kids. Created in 1916, Rockwell’s first Post cover, Boy with Baby Carriage, makes it clear that he did just that.

This exhibition takes a lively look at Rockwell’s approach to painting women and girls. According to Rockwell, “…I paint the kind of girls your mother would want you to marry,” but in fact, many of his female protagonist were strong and saavy. In his early career, he hired professional female models to pose for him, painting with a narrative realism that made his characters relatable to magazine’s target audience, women. Later, his neighbors, friends, and family members became the subjects of his work, and his images sprang to life with genuine smiles. animated expressions. and more naturalistic rendering. We hope that you’ll enjoy exploring Rockwell’s approach to painting women and girls, and the shifts in his approach that reflected his personal and artistic growth through the years.

Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA     July 12, 2020 through September 2020